Havana Marking, director of Afghan Star, her feature directorial début, walked away with the Best World Cinema Documentary Director and World Cinema Documentary Audience Awards at this year's Sundance Film Festival. Beginning this Friday at Manhattan's Cinema Village, in advance of its national theatrical roll-out, New York audiences will get to see this highly entertaining and deeply moving story of a country trying to awaken and normalize itself from decades of foreign invasion and brutal civil war--not to mention the banishment of music, dance, film and television since 1996 by the strictest faction of the Taliban regime.
When those restrictions were lifted in 2004, Tolo TV in Afghanistan, among hundreds of others, jumped into the broadcast fray and produced a talent show called "Afghan Star," now in its fifth season, a wildly popular phenomenon where singers of every ethnicity could compete for the top prize in an "American Idol"-type weekly showdown, a vast majority of the audience casting votes for their favorite by mobile phone. Marking's film focuses on the four finalists competing for cash prizes and a record deal. Two of the finalists happen to be female and their participation caused a national uproar, particularly when one of them, in an act of defiance and rebellion when she was voted off the show, uncovered her head and danced around the stage with approximately 11 million of her countrymen and countrywomen watching.
Originally commissioned by Sandra Whipham, formerly of More 4, and Maxyne Franklin of the Britdoc Foundation, Afghan Star is an Afghan / British co-production, exec produced by Jahid and Saad Mohseni's Kaboora Productions / Tolo TV (which produces an astonishing 14 hours a day of programming), and Mike Lerner and Martin Herring of London-based Roast Beef Productions.
Go to the Zeitgeist site and click on "where to see the film" for more information on the 12-state national roll-out. You can also watch producer Saad Mohseni's wonderful interview from earlier this month with Jon Stewart on "The Daily Show" by clicking here.
Broken record time, but the first weekend is always, always so key for an independent film's theatrical success. Flood that theater, people!
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